Kildare's Santa is an impostor

Santa's Kingdom - at a cost of anything from £22.50 (peak time) to £12.50 (weekdays) a ticket, plus £3 for parking, was hyped as a magical Lapland-style experience with real snow. So high were the expectations that touts were selling tickets for £100.

In November, when I interviewed Gerry Bolger, one of the entrepreneurs behind the £2 million project, he sounded genuinely determined to give children a special experience.

But by the time my three children (aged four, six and 10) and I had spent a combined total of 240 minutes standing in queues, my six-year-old had renamed Santa's Kingdom "Santa's rip-off".

She wasn't talking about being ripped off in money terms (we had press tickets given by the organisers who asked me to review Santa's Kingdom). She was talking in terms of expectations.

I had been stupid. People had said about Santa's Kingdom that it was either too good to be true, or it would be magnificent. Gerry Bolger was convincing, so I chose to be hopeful. I participated in the illusion for my children, by telling them we'd be travelling to Ice Mountain in a spaceship. (The flight simulator would convince children they were really flying, Gerry had said.)

I told the children they would be able to play with real snow - because that's what Gerry said.

You will have heard all the complaints by now, but I think this fiasco is worth writing about because there is nothing worse than an abuse of trust and expectations, especially where children are concerned.

I heard Padraig O'Hara, Bolger's partner in the project, telling the Gerry Ryan Show on 2FM (one of the sponsors) that on Sunday, December 2nd, people queued for no more than 15 minutes to get inside Santa's Kingdom - and that that included five minutes spent sitting on the bus.

The fact is that on that Sunday afternoon we queued for 80 minutes to get inside Santa's Kingdom - and that wait included 30 minutes sitting on a stationary bus with no entertainment. There was entertainment provided during this period only if O'Hara counts as entertainment piped Christmas muzak and a person in a bear suit with the Coca-Cola logo (one of the sponsors) standing around outside the bus looking bored.

Once we were allowed off the bus, we queued for 50 minutes to get inside Santa's Kingdom. Some families fared worse. One of the staff told me that on Saturday night, families booked in for an 8 p.m. shuttle didn't get inside until 11.15 p.m., by which time their children had fallen asleep.

While queueing to get inside Santa's Kingdom, a video played over and over again of a "creepy looking" (children's words) elf, reading the elf news in an apparent attempt at crowd orientation. "If that's what the elves are like, I'm not going in," said my six-year-old.

Then the elf said, by way of a joke: "If you've got children, pick 'em up. If you've got money, stick 'em up." That one scared me - and rightly, it turned out.

The "flight simulator" was like a bad Dr Who set: there were no flashing lights, only a video excerpt of the Snowman "walking through the air" sequence that the children had seen many times before. Whatever the pilot was saying we couldn't understand because the microphone didn't work. The simulator shuddered slightly, but there was no sensation of taking off and touching down.

Once inside Santa's village, our "group" of about 40 was herded around by an elf, who tried hard to stay cheerfully in character. We kept having to push the children to the front so that they could see what was going on, which meant the children kept getting lost and frightened. There was Santa's house and toy workshop, but being jammed in like sardines meant we could hardly see anything.

In the village square a light - very light - sprinkling of artificial snow fell. But it wasn't cold and turned to bubbles quickly.

The biggest disappointment came when we finally emerged into "Ice Mountain" 20 minutes later. There was pulverised white paper covering the floor. We queued for 50 minutes to throw snowballs which were just artificial snow contained in styrofoam boxes.

We queued for 60 minutes to have rides in an inner tube on "Ice Mountain", which was a ramp covered in ice. We were promised three rides each - but, when we finally reached the top of the queue, we were informed that we would have only two rides each.

Then - having queued a total of 190 minutes, we had to queue a further 50 minutes to see Santa Claus. At no time during any of this queueing was there entertainment or anything to watch.

When we finally got to Santa he was tired, with not a Ho-Ho-Ho left inside. "You're not Santa. You've got no moustache and I can see the strings on your beard," said the six-year-old." The fur on your coat isn't real either," Santa replied.

There was no playfulness and most of the elves were so tired of hearing complaints that their smiles were forced.

Then, after we emerged from seeing Santa, the last straw was that we found ourselves on a shopping strip with exorbitant prices (balloons £6.50 and flashing light wands £4 each). The kids had been so patient, that I bought them each a prize. The flashing wands stopped working by the time we got home. I'm really sorry we went there at all.